Lib at Large: The 'voicetramental' sound of Lipbone Redding

Rancho Nicasio celebrates its 70th anniversary next week with four nights of music, including the return of an erstwhile Manhattan subway musician with the uncanny ability to do a thing with his voice that makes him sound like his own horn section. He calls himself a "voicestramentalist."

His name is Lawrence Redding, but he can imitate a trumpet or a trombone so convincingly that he's earned the nickname "Lipbone."

Lipbone Redding made his Rancho debut last summer, opening for Elvin Bishop. Hearing him for the first time, the trombone player in Elvin's band, Ed Early, was dumbstruck.

"Ed couldn't take his eyes off him," Rancho owner Bob Brown remembers. "I said, 'I think you just lost your gig, Ed. This guy doesn't even have to check his horn at the airport."

The problem with this gimmick is that Redding runs the risk of being dismissed as a novelty act, and that would be selling him short, because he's an accomplished singer-songwriter-guitarist who's put out three pretty good albums and an EP in four years. I hope I'm not overselling him, but, for me, listening to him brings to mind Dave Alvin, Tom Waits, Greg Brown, Bob Seger, guys like that.

Inspired by the avant-garde vocalist Diamanda Galás, Redding hit on his lipbone technique while busking in the subway one night. As word of his rather astonishing talent spread above ground, even the New York Times took notice, calling it "remarkable."

"It was just an eruption of weird mouth noises," Redding explains, chuckling. "Maybe it was my inability to articulate verbally, but it came out as this trumpet, trombone-ish thing. I said, 'Well, there's something there.' So I went with it, following it along a line to where I am now."

Where he is now is touring the country at various times with his Lipbone Orchestra, which is what he jokingly calls the trio he formed with upright bassist/producer Jeff Eyrich and drummer Rich Zukor. Eyrich formerly had been with Dave's True Story, another New York trio I raved about when they played the Rancho in 2006.

Born and raised in North Carolina, 44-year-old Redding splits his time between Greenville, N.C., and New York's East Village, where he refined his sound — an Americana mix of jazz, blues, rock and New Orleans funk with world music thrown in — playing twice a week at a joint called Jules Jazz Bistro.

Redding's such a showman that it comes as something of a surprise when he talks about the musical and spiritual journey he's been on since 9/11 brought his subway career to a disturbing end.

"To me, all good music is spiritual," he says. "It has to come from that place."

In search of solace after the tragedy, he traveled to South America, where he was befriended by members of Inti-Illimani, a politically progressive folk/rock ensemble revered in Chile for their song "Venceremos" ("We shall win!"), which had been an anthem for the government of Salvador Allende.

"In the span of three months, I had a profound artistic experience," he recalls. "That was enough time to let the wound heal."

When he returned to the U.S., he hung briefly with a New Age crowd in upstate New York before moving to San Francisco, where he played guitar for yoga classes, landed a gig or two in Fairfax and became friends with the Indian musician G.S. Sachdev, a master of the bamboo flute.

Sachdev inspired him to make a pilgrimage to India, where he studied with V. Balaji, a professor of violin at Banaras Hindu University.

"He was a bit of a wild man," Redding remembers. "It was like watching performance art when he played violin and sang. It excited all the nerves in my body. It was not like other Indian music. He was on a mission to destroy whatever you thought you knew about Indian music. It was dramatic."

Inspired, Redding returned again to New York and put together the Lipbone Orchestra, recording the albums "Hop the Fence" in 2007 and "Party on the Fire Escape" in 2008, followed by the EP "Science of Bootyism." He's touring behind his excellent new album, "Unbroken."

After all his roaming and searching, Redding has settled down in Greenville with his girlfriend and her two kids.

"But I'm looking forward to coming back to Rancho Nicasio because I'm still seeking the others," he says, meaning "the others" in a spiritual sense. "You know, the ones who make it all happen."